Beach House repeats as 'Best Fish Fry' winner

For the second year in a row,
Grand Island's The Beach House has won Niagara Frontier Publication's "Best
Fish Fry" contest.

The popular restaurant took 11
percent of the vote. In total, 521 ballots were cast. Readers nominated 70
Western New York locations - primarily restaurants, but some churches, too.

"I appreciate people liking us,
and voting for us," said The Beach House's owner, Mike Mongan.
"It's a lot of hard work - not just by me. I'll say a tremendous amount of
credit goes to the staff that I have here. I have people that have been with me
for a very, very long time."

"Without them, the restaurant
wouldn't be successful," he added.

As was the case in 2013, those
voting for The Beach House weren't shy in singing the restaurant's praises.
Some of the comments received included:

•"You can always count on
consistently great fish frys week after week."

•"The fish tastes great and it is
not watery. It is fresh and the batter is not overpowering or too thick. It is
nice ... crunch on the outside and soft, flavorful fish inside."

•"It's full of flavor! Always
cooked to perfection. My mouth is watering now!"

•"I have been going to (The) Beach
House for 26 years. Excellent fish cooked by the owner."

•"Freshest fish and great potato
salad. Best ever - and I'm in my 80s."

"I'm very happy," Mongan
said.

"Our customers are very loyal," he
added. "I'll say, typically every week, I believe over 95 percent of the people
that walk through the door here are regular customers. We kind of get to know
them. They know us. It makes it more enjoyable.

"We have a good relationship with
our customers. We like them, and they like us."

Of course, to win a fish fry
contest two years in a row, a restaurant has to have the goods.

"We knock ourselves out to buy the
highest-quality fish that we can buy," Mongan said.

"We have a couple companies we
work very closely with, and they work closely with us," he noted. "They know
that we're there 52 weeks a year for them - not just during the Lent season,
like some place may be."

The Beach House is unique in that
it serves a fish fry three days a week - Thursday through Saturday - each and
every week.

"Many years ago - I've been here
since 1984 - and in my first or second year, on Ash Wednesday, I was
embarrassed, because I didn't appreciate the potential of fish frys that I could've
sold on Ash Wednesday," Mongan said. "The phone was
ringing off the wall. 'Do you have fish frys?' 'Do you have fish frys?' And we
kept having to say 'No.'

"And I said to myself, 'Next year,
we're going to be ready.' And so the next year, on Ash Wednesday, we were
ready."

Mongan's plan worked
- so well, in fact, that he decided to try it again.

"We did a good, good, healthy
business on Ash Wednesday," he said. "And then a light bulb went off in my
head, and I said, 'You know, I think we're going to do the fish fry the
following Wednesday, too.' Surprisingly, that went quite good. We did better business
than a normal Wednesday without the fish fry."

Buy why stop there, he thought.

"Then another evolution to the
fish fry here came, I'm going to say about a dozen years ago," Mongan
said. "We get so many requests for the fish fry. Sunday, Monday, you know. And
we thought, you know, the fish that we serve on Wednesdays is delivered on
Tuesdays. The fish that we serve on Friday gets delivered on Thursday. Every
Thursday, we have everything here to provide the fish fry for the customers, so
why don't we do that? So we thought, 'OK, we're going to include Thursday in
the lineup, too, of fish fry days.'

"Sure enough, that's worked out
great, also, and it gave Thursdays a big boost."

"The three-day-a-week thing has
worked out really good," he added.

Mongan credits
the late Rob Davis with making the Beach House a premier destination for fish.

"When he founded The Beach House
(in 1976), that was probably his No. 1 item, was the fish fry," Mongan
said.

Though The Beach House has a full
menu (and NFP staffers swear by its bacon cheeseburger basket), Mongan
said, "I eat the fish fry often.

"I do, yeah. I would say, average,
I have about one fish fry every week. Sometimes it's late at night on a Friday,
at, you know, 10:30, after we're closed up, and I got one piece that I saved
for myself."

Mongan and a handful of other
cooks prepare the fish.

"My manager's been with me for
20-25 years," Mongan said. "Us old-timers,
we're teachers, and we teach the younger people the right way - what is
acceptable."

Mongan began
as a dishwasher at the Figurehead Supper Club on Grand Island.

"As so often happens in small
restaurants, one day the cook doesn't show up, and the owner's in the kitchen
saying, 'Hey kid, get over here and help me,' " he said. "Over a period of
time, he taught me how to cook."

Mongan tried
to convert The Beach House's beer-battered fish fry into a breaded fish fry,
which is what he made at Figurehead.

It didn't take.

"The customers, they just wouldn't
have it," he said. "They wanted that beer-battered fish fry."

Over the years,
Mongan has perfected the beer-battered fish fry. He said he's cooked
hundreds of thousands of fish frys.

"I think I could probably be in
the Guinness Book of Records today for most fish frys," Mongan said.
"When I retire, I might sit down and calculate how many I've made, you know, in
all my years. It's a lot."

And it shows.

The Beach House is located at 5584
East River Road. For more information, call 716-773-7119.